The smashed grass in surrounding areas is proof: When it comes to parking for Kansas University football games, solutions aren’t always easy to come by.

And don’t expect this year’s answer to be smooth as skim milk. KU has re-assigned parking lots for ticket holders, and fans hoping for first choice at their favorite lot better hope they wrote out favorable checks recently.

“The parking lots are assigned by using current donor levels, rather than lifetime point totals,” associate athletic director Jim Marchiony said. “The individual that pledged the most money this year got first crack at the parking spaces.”

In the past, season-ticket holders were able to retain the same parking spot over the years, but the new concept is similar to what KU does with men’s basketball. Football, though, has an extra hurdle – and, in some cases, an extra reason to upset fans. While basketball fans climb out of their cars and bolt to warm Allen Fieldhouse during the frigid winter months, thousands of football fans get out the grill and beer and enjoy lengthy tailgate parties before the opening kickoff with fellow lot-mates.

Marchiony said KU tried to be sensitive to tailgating by altering long-standing policies prior to this season.

“We assigned lots, but we did not assign spaces,” Marchiony said. “We decided to stop assigning spaces because we got so many complaints from Williams Fund members that people were parking in spaces that were not assigned to them. It became a huge hassle.”

This map provided by Kansas University shows the parking areas available for home KU football games at Memorial Stadium. Changes to lot assignments has some fans upset.

But now, whether fans had tickets in the bowl or in the pricey suites upstairs, many are parking in lots they never have parked in before.

In many cases, the changes split traditional tailgating groups into different lots, and some longtime tailgaters were given the “PF” tag – for parking facility, the garage adjacent to the Kansas Union where tailgating isn’t allowed.

One thing going for fans is that, while tickets are one thing, Kansas has no monopoly on parking.

Solutions are out there for the “PF” partiers – swallowing the itch to tailgate and parking in the garage, swallowing the price of the parking tag and finding a nearby resident renting out his yard for vehicles, or parking in the garage and finding a nearby bar or restaurant for a different form of pregame partying.

But Marchiony said getting money back on an unwanted tag wasn’t likely to happen.

“We’ve gotten about 30 calls since the tickets have come out of people who we’d put in the ‘complaining’ category,” Marchiony said. “We’re re-explaining what the policy is, and explaining that the same exact policy was instituted in basketball last year, the same policy we announced long ago.

“We’re not in the refund business. They knew what the policy was when they ordered tickets. The good news is, the number of calls have dwindled in the last few days to almost nothing.”

But, like the priority-points system for men’s basketball and football, KU can expect some upset longtime fans in the wake of the new parking policy.

Fans have spoken out on message boards and in e-mails to the Journal-World regarding the shuffling.

KU officials don’t expect the parking changes to be completely settling and satisfactory to all fans, just as their was discord over changes to men’s basketball tickets, men’s basketball parking and football tickets in the recent past.

But in the new age of college athletics, where many believe money correlates with on-field success, it may be another way to raise funds and, consequently, raise the level of competition.

“Nothing in any of this process is stuck in cement,” Marchiony said. “We’ll see how this works and then decide how to move from there. It is a change, but once people get used to it, the more comfortable they’ll be.”